Ender’s Game is a sci-fi novel written by Orson Scott Card that’s been adapted to a film starring Harrison Ford, Ben Kingsley, Asa Butterfield, and Hailey Steinfeld, directed by Gavin Hood, whose American films, Rendition and Wolverine, have been underwhelming so far. It opens November 1st. Here’s the Wiki synopsis of the book:

Ender’s Game (1985) is a science fiction novel by American author Orson Scott Card. Set in Earth’s future, the novel presents an imperiled humankind that has barely survived two conflicts with the “Buggers”, an insectoid alien species. In preparation for an anticipated third invasion, an international fleet maintains a school to find and train future fleet commanders. The world’s most talented children, including the novel’s protagonist, Ender Wiggin, are taken at a very young age to a training center known as the Battle School. There, teachers train them in the arts of war through increasingly difficult games including ones undertaken in zero gravity in the Battle Room, where Ender’s tactical genius is revealed.

So… Starship Troopers, but younger, basically? And the bugs are a metaphor for the gays? I always find it weird when sci-fi works so hard on creating some crazy universe unto itself and then gives a key plot element a vague name like “Buggers” or “unobtanium.” “Here’s a mysterious robot powered by light that controls all life on the universe.” “Ooh, what’s it called?” “Eh, I dunno, a doohickey.”

My God, it’s made of shrugs. I mean, that’s definitely a movie alright. At the very least, I’m just glad they could maintain the idea that the future will involve lots of people controlling stuff via holographic touch screen. Holograms. Total future move.

yea I’ve been told that if I google Orson Scott Card and read anything he’s said in the last 20 years, I will stop loving this book, so I have remained ignorant and just refuse to read any of his newer stuff as penance

Orson Scott Card is pretty much only famous for writing Ender’s Game and its a million prequels and sequels in terms of as a writer, but that book is really well loved so he is quite famous for that,

in terms of what makes him so bad, every interview I’ve ever read with him is either him bashing homosexuals, minorities, or jews, or him explaining why his previous statements where taken out of context, while still bashing those same groups in the new interview.

I grew up semi-obsessed with this book and therefore I am an authority and I can tell you that this trailer looks terrible. I am very nervous. Asa Butterfield also completely aged out of the role between filming Hugo and this, but I could get beyond that if the rest didn’t look so shitty and tonally off.

Starship Troopers (the film) closely follows Starship Troopers (the book), which was published in 1959. Ender’s Game was published in 1985. So there could not have been any theft. There are many shared themes.

Seriously, saying Starship Troopers the movie closely follows the book is like saying 300 is an accurate depiction of the battle of Thermopylae, except that 300 does draw more from that than the ST movie draws from Heinlein’s book.

Ender’s Game itself is definitely a must-read science fiction book. The three after it get weird and are nothing like EG. Then again, Card wrote EG just as a way to set up Ender as a space priest in the following books.

Ender’s Game equals awesomesauce to the Nth degree. The first sequel Speaker for the Dead is almost as good though there are some hurdles to get over when reading it, namely the effects of relativism on space travel, etc.

The other sequals to EG are throwaways and I wouldn’t waste your time (I certainly did). That said, Ender’s Shadow and Shadow of the Giant are good as standalone sci-fi books but are definitely up to the task of standing with the original novel. There was a rumor going around that Ender’s Game and Ender’s Shadow would be filmed simultaneously, though I haven’t heard anything on that since the production actually got under way.

HBO needs to give “Dune” the “Game of Thrones” treatment. I know that was off-topic, it made me start thinking about classic sci-fi books that I love. “Dune” and someone needs to make a series of “Hyperion” as well. Great stuff. But don’t do it like “Ender’s Game”, that trailer was meh – at best.

The trailer seems to indicate that Ender knows he is fighting actual aliens. But the whole point of the book is that Ender, a child, thinks he is being trained, while in fact he is fighting a real war remotely. That is the primary point of the book: that by disassociating the fighting from its moral issues, a more effective commander can be created. In the book, Ender doesn’t have to worry about casualties, about any moral issues, or even about whether the war is a just one, because he thinks it’s all a drill.

Take that element away from the story and all you have is a reboot of The Last Starfighter, which this movie may resemble even more than it resembles Starship Troopers.

But even beyond that, was there anything about that trailer that made you want to rush out and see the movie? And speaking of adaptations taking liberties with the source material, I just saw a trailer for “World War Z”. It seems to have absolutely nothing to do with the book, other than a worldwide zombie outbreak.

Ender knows he is training to fight aliens. The climatic battle scenes are real battles conducted by an earth armada sent years before to the bugger’s home planet. Ender and his generals think they are just running a simulation. It’s afterwards when he realizes he killed millions remotely that he becomes spiritual in the sequels.

The idea behind Ender’s Game is a pretty cool one. But Orson Scott Card is a fucking hack in terms of actual writing ability. The book would have been a thousand times better if he could have been able to just explain the basic plot to a decent writer and then let them actually write it.